Month: November 2012

At the launch of the DVD of his latest hit Barfi! recently Ranbir gave some quirky excuses on why should people watch his film on a DVD. “Since we know it is a health conscious country we live in, so instead of gifting Barfi sweets buy them Barfi! DVDs,” said Ranbir, who played a deaf and mute character in his super hit film.

“When we have grand children, the film will not be in the theatres. So to show them and teach them about life the DVD is good. So you must invest today and reap benefits later… So buy a DVD for investment. Like you buy LIC, buy Barfi! DVD,” he said.

“If you sell a smile through cinema, nothing is greater than that,” he added in a lighter vein, as he was accompanied by co-star Ileana D’Cruz. In fact, the salesman in Ranbir was all set to go all out selling his film to the Oscar committee too. “Hope the Oscar committee gets some sense and they select the film. Else Dada will go there,” he said.

In a Diwali gift to girls in families living below poverty line (BPL), Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) standing committee has approved an insurance policy for all girls born after June 6, 2012. The beneficiary girl child will get Rs 1.24 lakh on attaining the age of 21, without any investment from her or the family. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has decided to implement this scheme through the trusted Life Insurance Corporation Of India (LIC).

The ambitious project has been planned by chairman of standing committee Dayashankar Tiwari on the line of schemes in MP, Rajasthan, Haryana etc. However, NMC is the first civic body to implement the scheme on its own. Most such schemes are funded by either the state government or the centre.

Domestic institutional investor Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) seems to be diverting its attention on sunrise sectors like software and telecommunications from the traditional financial, consumer and cement sectors.

According to a global research report released by Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, the public sector insurer has offloaded shares worth over `7,020 crore in financial, consumer and cement companies during the second quarter of the current financial year. But during the quarter it has acquired shares worth over ` 2,355 crore in software and telecom companies, it said.

It added that the company sold shares of private lenders ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank and pharma company Cipla during the July-September quarter and purchased shares belonging to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and telecom major Bharti Airtel.

LIC sold shares valued about $450 million within the finance portfolio during the second quarter followed by consumer ($198 million), cement ($192 mn), pharma ($139 million), industrial ($134 million) and media/hotel ($53 million).

As per the report, LIC has emerged as net sellers during the July-September quarter of 2012 and most of the pullout was from private sector companies. On the other hand, LIC was a net buyer in the April-June quarter of 2012 with a purchase of shares worth over $2 billion in Indian equities and sold shares of $115 million.

LIC’s investment in the software sector stood at $277 million followed by $112 million in the telecom sector, $23 million in auto, $19 million in metal and mininig and $5 million in the energy sector. While financial sector accounted for over 24% of LIC’s total equity portfolio in the country, energy segment constituted over 16%, consumer goods at 12% and industrial space about 10%.